15 Cities and Countries That Will Pay You to Hang Out
The cost of living is, we can all presumably agree, insane. A really depressing exercise is figuring out how much of your working day is spent just earning enough to keep a roof over your head and food in your stomach. Concluding that everything you earn before 3 p.m. is spent simply existing is pretty brutal.
However, there are places that want you to go and exist there — places that need more people, that want you to spend those few bucks you have left in their local stores and bring more life to the area. It’s kind of odd to wrap your head around. We’re all so used to everything, absolutely everything, every goddamn thing every day, costing money, that the idea of just… being… given… some? What? What the hell?
In this futuristic era of remote working, it turns out a lot of really beautiful places with not enough people will offer incentives for you to move there and then, like, log on and do your job. It’s worth them doing so — your tax and day-to-day spending will contribute to the local economy and you might bring the average age down a bit. Plus, these things become self-fulfilling — if enough people move somewhere, it suddenly becomes trendy and desirable and nobody has to pay anyone shit. That’s the dream!
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Rebuild a Beautiful Sardinian Home… For Money!
The glorious Italian island of Sardinia is offering remote workers $16,500 to move to its small coastal villages, and has put roughly $100 million aside for it. As long as the money goes toward renovating a home, you’re gold.
West Virginia? For $12k, More Like Best Virginia!
Young workers keep leaving West Virginia, so a scheme called Ascend WV is offering people $12,000 to move to a few certain towns there, along with access to co-working spaces and all kinds of adventure sports vouchers and equipment.
Taiwanna Buncha Free Money
Half a million visitors to Taiwan over the next two years will be given vouchers for NT$5,000 — about $163, so not nothing, but less than the fare there. Their tourism industry was battered by COVID, so this scheme aims to attract visitors from nearby places.
Tulsa Won’t Repulse Ya
Moving to Tulsa could bring a $10,000 bonus — the Tulsa Remote scheme was set up to attract workers to the city, providing free desk space plus cold hard cash. It’s 17 percent cheaper than the national average anyway: sounds okay!
Free Italian Trains: A Raily Good Offer
Strikingly beautiful but slightly off-the-beaten-track, and nowhere near as well-known as other Italian cities, Friuli Venezia Giulia is so confident you’ll like it that they’ll refund your train fare from anywhere else in Italy.
Fuck This Shit, Let’s All Go Live in Italy
Starting in 2011, a lot of remote and underpopulated Italian villages have sold abandoned homes for $1 to attract remote workers. In 2021 Maenza, only an hour from Rome, started doing it. Why don’t we all just do that? Shit!
Are You a Canadian or a Can’tadian?
Ten dollars will get you a plot of land in Pipestone, Manitoba. You have to pay a grand deposit up front, but get $990 back once you’ve built a house.
Bags and Bagpipes of Cash
The islands off Scotland have an issue with dwindling populations of mainly 90-year-olds, so recently announced a controversial £50,000 “welcome grant” for young families moving to the islands.
It’s All Downhill from Here (In a Good Way)
Just an hour from the ski resort of Verbier, the Swiss town of Albinen is offering €25,000 a head to families willing to move there, commit to a decade and buy a nice house. Done!
A Place to Vanish and Be Spanish
Rubiá, in northwest Galicia in Spain, will pay you €150 a month to live there — not a princely sum, but considering everywhere else on Earth charges you, that’s pretty sweet. It’s an incredibly pretty place to drink yourself insane alone.
¡Bienvenido!
A collection of Spanish villages known as the National Network of Welcoming Villages have a scheme to attract remote workers by offering €3,500 to move there and guaranteeing cartoonishly low rent.
Italy: Come Here, In Every Sense
Presicce-Acquarica in the southern Italian region of Puglia not only wants people to move there, it wants people to move there and make more people — a €30,000 relocation bonus and an extra €1,000 for every baby born there.
Greece Is the Word
You could be given a house and get paid $500 a month to live on the stunning Greek island of Antikythera. The only catches: You need to have kids and be comfortable constituting about 15 percent of the population.
Moneysota
Bemidji, Minnesota — as seen in the movie Fargo — is offering remote workers $2,500, free working space and a fancy concierge service to help them with problems like, “Oh god, where the fuck have I moved to?”
Not in Kansas Anymore? No, Nobody Is, That’s Why They’ll Pay You
Relocate to Topeka, Kansas and — if you buy a home there — you could be given $15,000 free of charge, courtesy of the Choose Topeka program. There’s no place like a subsidized home!
